About six weeks ago, Amanda Ripley published an article suggesting that it be made more difficult to become a teacher. I'll add one story.

My colleague at the University of Virginia, Shige Oishi, is, without exaggeration, a brilliant and highly accomplished man. I recently learned that he briefly thought about a career in teaching in Japan. I asked why he didn't pursue it.

He told me "I wasn't sure I could do it. The entrance examination is very very difficult. I knew I would have to study at least a year, and then I wasn't sure I could pass."

So he took the easy route. He got a PhD and became a professor.

This piece originally appeared at RealClearEducation.com on June 17, 2014


Stick a few hundred kids together in a building for six hours and you can bet that a few are going to misbehave. How teachers and administrators should react to rule infractions—especially more serious ones—is perennial problem. A newly published report from the School Discipline Consensus Project, with over 700 experts contributing, offers the most comprehensive answer I’ve seen.

The reports starts with two grim facts. First, present practices are ineffective. Policies tend to focus on student removal--suspensions, expulsions and arrests—as a way to keep schools orderly and safe. But while they are removed the offenders fall behind in their schoolwork, and removal puts them at greater risk for dropping out or getting in trouble with the law. Second, present policies are poorly implemented. Students are often suspended for minor infractions such as cell phone use, and kids from some groups—those with disabilities, kids of color, and LGBT youth—are disproportionately disciplined.

What’s a better way? The overarching principle emphasized in the report is the creation of more positive environments in schools and classrooms, and more supportive relationships among students, teachers, and administration. Sounds great. How do we get there? Actions in schools and districts such as these:

1)      Collect (disaggregated) data on infractions and on factors that are predictive of misbehavior. Make these data transparent to all, consistent with privacy policies.

2)      Work on school climate, for example through social/emotional learning programs.

3)      Design a graduated system of responses to misconduct that keeps students in school whenever possible, addresses the harm caused, and considers the factors that may contribute to the problem, while encouraging students to take responsibility for changing their behavior.

4)      Have a place on school grounds to which disciplined students can be removed but still receive instruction and social or emotional support, as needed.

5)      Partner with police to ensure that officers understand school policies, to formalize cooperation in written documents that are periodically reviewed, and to ensure that officers on school grounds are committed to the school learning environment.

6)      Plan for ways to divert students from the juvenile justice system for minor infractions (if appropriate); plan for ways that students released from correctional facilities can transition smoothly back to community schools.

The six points listed above constitute an incomplete summary of the very broad goals that the report addresses. These broad goals are cashed out in over 60 more specific action recommendations. But even in a long report (some 400 pages) these inevitably end up as guidelines rather than specific blueprints, e.g., “Address physical facility conditions and school security procedures to ensure schools are safe and feel secure while also being welcoming and orderly.”

 

The value of the report lies not in the specificity of the recommendations, but in the breadth of its vision. It gives an administrator or legislator a view of just how broad the problem is, and emphasizes that attending to just one or two pieces of this complex puzzle will not be sufficient. And although it cannot serve as a policy guidebook, it does lay out big-picture conclusions based on solid research.

A natural reaction upon reading this report might be despair: sixty recommended actions, each of them formidable in its own right. The authors anticipate this reaction, and confirm that implementing all of the recommendations at once would be impossible, and further, that there is no right or wrong place to start. The important thing is to start.

 

Let’s hope this report provides some impetus to reform in discipline practices. There’s little evidence that current policies are serving students and schools well, and there is reason to think we can do better.

This column first appeared at RealClearEducation.com on June 12, 2014

How can we do a better job of teaching kids math? A different curriculum? New pedagogical strategies? Personalized instruction through technology? All these worthy ideas have their adherents, but another method—reducing math anxiety—may both improve performance and help kids enjoy math more. Sian Beilock and I recently reviewed the research literature on math anxiety with an eye towards remediation. Here are some of the highlights.

Math anxiety means, unsurprisingly, that one feels tension and apprehension in situations involving math. What is surprising is the frequency of the problem, and the young age at which it can start. Fully half of first and second graders feel moderate to severe math anxiety. And many children do not outgrow it; about 25% of students attending a four-year college suffer from math anxiety. Among community college students, the figure is 80%.

The consequences of math anxiety are also unsurprising; people avoid situations where they might have to do math. So as you’d predict, math anxiety is associated with having difficulty in math. Now you might think “Well, math anxiety actually sounds pretty logical. If you’re bad at math, then doing math would make you anxious.” But it’s not just appropriate anxiety about facing a tough challenge; the term “math anxiety” is used only in cases where the person would perform better at math if he or she were calmer.

And that gives us a start on understanding the mechanism of the problem. Anxiety distracts. It’s hard to focus on the math because your mind is preoccupied with concern that you’ll fail, that you’ll look stupid, and so on. Every math problem is a multi-tasking situation, because all the while the person is trying to work the problem, he’s also preoccupied with anxious thoughts.

There seem to be two sources of math anxiety. First, there’s a vicious cycle at work; you’re anxious because the math is hard, the anxiety makes you avoid math, and that lack of practice makes the math still harder. We might guess, then, that the cycle might start with the very earliest math instruction, and indeed there is evidence that children who have trouble with basic numeric skills—counting, appreciating which of two numbers is the larger—are at greater risk for developing math anxiety.

The second source of math anxiety is social. Kids learn from adults—parents, teachers, figures in the media—that math is hard, and something to be feared. For example, students are at greater risk to develop math anxiety if their teacher is anxious about math. This social communication constitutes information for kids about how to think about their difficulty with math; it’s hard not because you’re inexperienced and need more practice, but because lots of people (maybe including you) just cant’ do it. They aren’t “math people.”

So what can be done?

The sources of math anxiety provide strong clues about how to address it. First, we can work hard to ensure that all children acquire basic skills. Math won’t provoke anxiety if kids know they can handle it. Second, teacher training can include information about how to talk to kids who do encounter difficulties; how to ensure that kids see their setbacks as a normal part of learning and problems that can be overcome, rather than as evidence that they are simply no good at math.

The testing of a third strategy is still in its infancy, but shows promise. Some studies show that giving students ten minutes to write about their emotions just before a math exam significantly boosts scores. The idea is that getting their thoughts on paper prompts students to reevaluate how anxious they really ought to be. The thought “it would be catastrophic to fail this test!” may race through your mind, but when you start to set it down on paper, you’re likely to think “well. . . .would failing really be a catastrophe?” Ten minutes of this writing reflection may put the upcoming confrontation with math in perspective, and so feelings of anxiety will not be consuming the student’s thoughts and attention during the exam.

Researchers and educators must continue to seek new pedagogies to improve math education. In parallel with these efforts, we should seek methods to address math anxiety. The payoff could be significant.

Reference

Beilock, S. & Willingham, D. T. (2014). Math anxiety: Can teachers help students reduce it? American Educator, Summer, 28-32,43.

This column first appeared at RealClearEducation.com on June 5, 2014.

We normally expect that a kindergarten classroom will be decorated with colorful posters, maps, and student artwork. But a recent study indicated that trimming out the classroom may distract students, and compromise learning.

Headlines in the press have been not equivocated. The Telegraph, Tampa Bay Times, and Smithsonian all ran stories along the lines of “wall displays distract from learning,” while the Daily Mail asked whether they should be banned altogether. My hunch is that most kindergarten teachers and parents of kindergarteners would not agree, but it’s worth looking at why this conclusion would be hasty.

The study confirms something you likely find intuitive; if there are bright, colorful things on the wall, kids will look at them, and will do so at times that the teacher hopes their attention will be focused on something else. Hence, kids might learn less about the lesson plan in such an environment.

The study (Fisher et al, 2014) took place in a laboratory reconfigured to look like a classroom. Kids first visited on five occasions to get to know the “teacher” (i.e., researcher) and to acquaint them with the paper-and-pencil measures that would be used in the experiment. Over the following two weeks, kids listened to six read-alouds on science topics (e.g., volcanoes, the solar system) in groups. Afterwards, children answered six questions about the lesson.

During the familiarization sessions, there were a moderate number of decorations on the walls. During the experimental sessions, the walls were either bare, or quite covered.

There were two outcomes of interest: first, how kids scored on the test in each environment, and second, the frequency with which kids were distracted. Children were videotaped during the story, and they were deemed to be thinking about something else if their eyes were not on the teacher.

The results were as you would expect. Kids spent a greater percentage of time looking away from the teacher in the decorated classroom (38% of time vs. 28% of time). And kids in the decorated classroom scored lower on the assessment (42% vs. 55%).

I can see two important reasons to be cautious when interpreting these results.

First, it seems likely to me that kids would habituate to the wall decorations in time. The authors address that possibility in their paper, citing data presented at a conference (but not yet published) showing that kids distraction was above baseline levels two weeks after the introduction of a distracting classroom environment. But the abstract of the talk also says that there was significantly less distraction in week 2 than in week 1. In other words, kids were getting used to the busy environment, and might have returned to baseline soon.

Second, even if we accept that classroom decoration brings a cost to learning, we should remember that teachers have other reasons for brightening their rooms; they want the classroom to be inviting, to feel like a social environment. Would it be more difficult to build a sense of classroom community in the sterile environment? That’s at least plausible. In other words, there may be a cost to outcomes that were not evaluated in this study.

Or to put it another way, the sterile environment is the wrong control condition. How about comparing the busy environment with something that looks homier, but less stimulating:  a serene painting or two on each wall, perhaps a vase of dried flowers on a table, that sort of thing.

I think there’s a useful point for lower elementary teachers to consider here. As the lead researcher mentions in a video about the study, it seems ironic that classrooms become less decorated as kids get older, given that it’s the younger kids who have more difficulty regulating attention. But I don’t think bare walls are the way to go.

Fisher, A. V., Godwin, K. E., & Seltman, H. (2014). Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad. Psychological science, 0956797614533801.